This Automaker Tells Owners to Park 225,000 Vehicles as Takata Air Bag Crisis Refuses to Die

Stellantis has finally done what should have happened years ago: tell owners to stop driving.

On Wednesday, the automaker issued a blunt “do not drive” warning covering roughly 225,000 Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles in the United States equipped with unrepaired Takata air bags. Not “schedule service soon.” Not “check with your dealer.” Park them. Now.

This is not a paperwork issue. It is a life-or-death failure that has haunted the industry for more than a decade. The defective Takata inflators can degrade over time, especially in hot and humid conditions. When they deploy, they can rupture and blast metal fragments into the cabin. Federal regulators have tied at least 28 deaths and 400 injuries to exploding Takata air bags. Even minor crashes can trigger catastrophic results. And yet here we are.

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The affected list reads like a greatest hits album for enthusiasts: 2003–2010 Dodge Ram, 2006–2015 Dodge Charger, 2008–2014 Dodge Challenger, 2005–2015 Chrysler 300, 2007–2016 Jeep Wrangler and more. These aren’t disposable commuter cars. They’re trucks, muscle cars and SUVs that owners hold onto for years. Vehicles that define brands built on performance and durability. Instead, drivers are being told not to turn the key.

Sixty-seven million Takata air bags have been recalled in what regulators have called the largest and most complex safety recall in U.S. history. The scale alone tells the story: this wasn’t a minor supplier hiccup. It was a systemic industry failure that dragged on while vehicles aged, changed hands and slipped through the cracks.

The warning from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration leaves no wiggle room. If your vehicle is on the list and hasn’t been repaired, don’t drive it. Period.

This is the reckoning. Years after the scandal broke, hundreds of thousands of owners are still at risk because defective hardware remained on the road. Stellantis is now scrambling to accelerate repairs, but the damage to trust is already done.

For an industry that prides itself on engineering excellence, this is a humiliating reminder: safety shortcuts and delayed fixes don’t just look bad in headlines. They put metal shrapnel in cabins. And eventually, regulators force your hand.